


Don't I Know You From Somewhere?

by rhysiana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grocery Store, Hilarious Misunderstanding Leads to Romance, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Southern Manners Strike Again, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 19:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11881575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: Bitty is sure, absolutelysure, he would remember meeting the familiar-looking guy standing in front of him in the grocery store before, but heaven help him if he can place him now, let alone come up with a name. It's okay, though; his Southern manners will carry him through. He's sure he'll figure out how he knows Mr. Gorgeous later.





	Don't I Know You From Somewhere?

**Author's Note:**

> A little meet cute I [posted on tumblr](https://rhysiana.tumblr.com/post/164462084423/rhysiana-a-little-au-meet-cute-based-on) in response to [this prompt](https://billypoindexter.tumblr.com/post/164430848292/so-i-was-watching-say-yes-to-the-dress-yesterday), and then it took off, so I figured I should officially string together all the bits and pieces here.

**Bitty**

Bitty was rounding the end of the cereal aisle, rechecking the grocery list to see if he’d gotten everything and wondering what was wrong with the state of public education in New England that none of his roommates had apparently learned basic penmanship, when he ran into someone.

“Oh my _god_ , I am _so_ sorry!” he exclaimed, and suppressed the wince as his accent reflexively came out full force. (It was partly the apologizing, and partly that he’d learned people were more forgiving if they thought he wasn’t from ’round here. He’d decided to embrace it; if he couldn’t get rid of the accent, it might as well be good for something.)

“No, no problem,” said the person, and then Bitty actually looked at him and felt that familiar terror of countless small-town grocery runs with his mother, where they ran into someone that he _knew_ he was supposed to know, but could not place for the life of him, let alone remember an actual name.

“Well, hey!” he exclaimed, racking his brain frantically for the reason this guy looked so familiar. Surely he’d remember someone who looked like _that_. Lord. There was nothing, though, so he let autopilot take over. “How have you been?”

Tall, Dark, and Handsome blinked at him. (How could Bitty have forgotten eyes that blue? What even was wrong with him today? This was ridiculous.) “Uh, okay, actually. Yup. Everything going well.”

“Well, that’s great!” Bitty glanced at his list again. “Hey, can you read this? I genuinely can’t tell if this is supposed to be English.”

The guy obligingly took the paper from him and squinted at it. “Provolone, I think.”

Bitty took the list back and stared at it for a second. “I think you’re right. Honestly, Holster.”

“I was just heading toward the deli myself.”

“How perfect! I really kind of hate shopping by myself? But this was just supposed to be a quick in and out, or at least it was until I realized I apparently live with chickens in human guise who never learned to write properly.”

By the time Bitty and The Guy checked out and parted ways half an hour later, Bitty still hadn’t recalled his name, and by then it was clearly too late to admit it.

Oh well, he’d probably remember later, when he was trying to fall asleep.

~*~*~*~

“You know,” he called pointedly from the kitchen, “y’all _could_ make yourselves useful and help me put all these things away.”

“Yes! Bro! Did you see that pass?” Holster yelled instead.

“Beauty,” Ransom answered, and then there was the sound of a high-five.

Bitty sighed and stuck his head around the corner to see what they were yelling about now.

SportsCenter, as usual, was on, playing highlights from the Falconers’ game the night before. As Bitty watched, it switched from the on-ice play to an intermission interview.

An intermission interview. With the guy from the grocery store.

Jack Zimmermann.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Bitty said for the second time that day, hands to his cheeks, which were indeed burning up.

Holster looked over at him in concern. “Bits? What’s wrong? Why do you look like a tomato?”

“I just spent half an hour casually grocery shopping with Jack fucking Zimmermann because I thought he looked familiar and I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t place him. Oh my god, I could just _die_.”

Ransom and Holster exchanged glances and then they were on him. “No shit! What’s he like? What did he buy? Tell us everything!”

“I can never shop there again,” Bitty said faintly.

 ~*~*~*~

**Jack**

“Zimmboni! Hello!” Fingers snapped in front of Jack’s face where he’d zoned out on the treadmill. “Hey, Jack!”

Jack blinked himself back to reality. “Oh, sorry, Tater. Need something?”

Tater shook his head and fiddled with the settings of the treadmill next to Jack’s before starting his own run. “No, you just acting weird. What’s up with you?”

Jack slowed as his treadmill hit the cool-down phase. “When’s the last time you talked to someone who just treated you like a normal person?”

Tater shot him a look out of the corner of his eye and made a pointed gesture between the two of them.

“No, I mean, someone who genuinely doesn’t know who you are and doesn’t care.”

“Ah. Hmmmmm.” More than any of the other guys on the team, Jack knew Tater would get it; he’d grown up as the product of two famous parents as well. After a while, it was just easier to assume everyone wanted something from you, in one way or another. “Is easier here, sometimes. Not everyone is hockey fan.”

“Yeah. But this was… It was better than that.”

“What happen?”

“I ran into this guy at the grocery store—well, I guess he actually ran into me—and he just smiled at me like I was an old friend and asked how I was doing and then we ended up doing the rest of our shopping together?” He heard it become a question at the end, and that was accurate, because he still didn’t know how it had happened.

“And you know him?”

Jack shook his head. “No, I swear I’ve never seen him before in my life. I’d, uh, I’d remember.”

Tater raised his eyebrows knowingly at that, but just kept running.

“Anyway,” Jack said, finally slowing to a walk, “it was just… really nice.”

“So when you talk to him again?”

Jack frowned. “I can’t.”

Tater smacked the stop button on his treadmill and jumped his feet out to the edges so he could turn to look at Jack. “Why not?! He make you,” he gestured up and down at Jack, “ _happy_! Look at you. You never like this.”

“No, I mean I literally can’t. I don’t know his name and I didn’t get his number or anything.”

Tater smacked his forehead with his hand. “Zimmboni! So stupid. Snowy will be very ashamed.”

“I know, I know.”

“Where you say you meet him?”

“The grocery store.”

Tater restarted his treadmill. “Well,” he said with a shrug, “now you must do shopping many times, until you meet him again.”

Jack grabbed his towel and headed toward the showers. That… wasn’t actually a bad idea.

 ~*~*~*~

**Bitty**

Bitty was on his way home from work when Ransom called him.

“Bitty! My dude. My bro. My friend.”

“What,” Bitty said flatly. He knew that tone of voice.

“Can you stop by the store on your way home? We invited March and April over so they can watch the volleyball tournament on our sports package, and we are like totally out of _everything_.”

“Well, I know that’s not true…” Bitty tried, but Ransom cut him off.

“Please, please, please, we have no hummus, Bitty. _No hummus_.”

Holster grabbed the phone. “You don’t understand what a disaster this will be without hummus, Bits. I’m talking epic proportions. Epic.”

“What is wrong with y’all? Fine. Whatever. I will stop and get you some hummus.”

“And wine.”

“And maybe those tiny frozen quiches,” Ransom said, grabbing the phone back.

“Don’t push it, mister,” Bitty said, hanging up. His roommates were ridiculous. A hummus disaster. Honestly.

He turned into the grocery store parking lot and sat for a moment with the keys still in the ignition. He took a breath. It would be fine. The likelihood of running into Jack Zimmermann again was surely tiny. This was the only convenient store between work and home, and he would be damned if he be driven out of his own domain by one embarrassing incident.

He got out of the car and lifted his chin. He’d be fine.

~*~*~*~

He was bending over to compare the various flavors of hummus on the bottom row of the deli cooler case when he heard, “Oh! It’s you,” behind him.

_Oh no_. This couldn’t be happening. Slowly, so slowly, feeling like he was moving through molasses, he straightened up and turned around. He could tell his cheeks were already flaming.

“Um. Hey,” he ventured with a tiny wave, and then felt like an idiot. “Uh, Mr. Zimmermann.”

Zimmermann’s face fell, the tentative smile he’d been wearing visibly disappearing behind a bland public mask Bitty recognized from interviews. (Not that he’d fallen down a YouTube hole Googling Jack Zimmermann after their last encounter or anything, no sir.)

“Oh. You know who I am now.”

Bitty tried not to fidget, but it was beyond him to not gesture when talking. “I’m so, _so_ sorry about last time! It was just… you looked so familiar, you see, and I couldn’t figure out why, and I didn’t want to be _rude_ , and I figured I’d remember your name later…” He trailed off awkwardly, hands fluttering back to his sides.

Jack looked down and rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand, his own cheeks looking a bit pink now. “It was actually… kind of nice? No one ever talks to me like I’m just a normal person.”

Bitty blinked at him. “Really? Well.” He paused for half a second as his common sense tried to rein him in, but he forged ahead anyway. “We can certainly fix that. Talking is kind of my specialty. Well, that and baking.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the hummus and then turned resolutely away. “Tell me, Mr. Zimmermann,” he said, stepping forward and taking Jack’s elbow to steer him toward the produce section so he could look at the fruit, “when was the last time you had a homemade pie?”

Jack went with him, unresisting. He looked slightly bemused, but he wasn’t running away, so that was good enough for Bitty. “Jack, please. Uh, I don’t think I remember?”

Bitty patted his arm. “It’s okay, hon, I got you.”

~*~*~*~

**Ransom and Holster**

Ransom reached out and grabbed Holster’s arm dramatically, shoving his phone at Holster’s face. “Bro. Bro, it worked. I told you it would work.”

**Bitty:** _Y’all have exactly 15 minutes to clear your butts out of the apartment. Am bringing Jack Zimmermann back to bake him a pie._

“Dude,” Holster breathed reverently. “I will never doubt the power of your spreadsheets again.”

They grabbed the hummus and wine out of the fridge and headed over to March and April’s.

**Author's Note:**

> From my tags on the original posts:  
> -Ransom had all these calculations of when the Falcs were in town x the last time they knew Jack had been grocery shopping.  
> -They combed social media for Jack sightings around Providence to figure out how often he seemed to need to go shopping.  
> -It was a whole involved operation; they're good wingmen.  
> -And March and April totally have the sports package on their own TV.  
> -And in response to a person objecting to the idea that Bitty would ever allow frozen store-bought mini-quiches in his house: "Well, I mean, you’ll notice Bitty did hang up on Ransom at that point… We’ve already established his roommates are animals. (New headcanon for this AU: R&H developed a frozen mini-quiche problem thanks to Costco runs in their pre-Bitty life, and Bitty has yet to raise their standards. They think they’re making life more convenient for him; he thinks they have sadly underdeveloped palates. He’s working on it.)"


End file.
